Summer, 1963: John McGahern

The Book Bench is on summer vacation this week, which gives us the chance to run some of our favorite writing on summertime from the magazine’s archives. Check back every day for a new selection. (Each is available in full in our digital edition.)

From the September 21, 1963, issue, John McGahern’s “Summer at Strandhill.” A young boy vacationing with his family near Knocknarea, on the northwestern coast of Ireland, has stolen two comic books to stave off boredom.

The boy waited, listening, the conversations about him so hopeless and endless. The rain would wash down these panes the whole afternoon; the light would grow even duller on the eternal blue sea of the wallpaper, patterned with those floral sailing ships, their red and yellow hollyhocks standing tall for masts. He began to turn the pages of the comics without reading; the pleasure of delaying pleasure within his grasp was often as keen as its actual enjoyment. The same people filled these pages week after week—Rockfist Rogan and Alf Tupper and Wilson the Iron Man, his favorites—all of them a thousand times more living than the people of the room.

The pleasure of lingering over the pages grew stale and became the desire to possess, and it was easy to satisfy this desire. There would be no anguish. All he had to do was begin the read. Then the room, the conversations, the cries of the sea gulls, the sea faded. He was gone at last into the stolen world of marvel.

Alf Tupper put aside his welder and goggles for the day and came out under the archway, where overhead the trains in smoke and flaring sparks thundered toward distant cities in the evening, to eat his meal of fish and chips before changing into his running clothes and pounding round and round miles of industrial streets, training for the Saturday he’d go to the White City to wear his country’s singlet; and on the great day, the crowd that early in the race had wondered if Tupper could possibly do it again, when the crack Italian, Stefanozzi, was striding away out, so far ahead, had to rise wildly to their feet to cheer Alf home as he tore through the field in that fantastic last lap! And Wilson, Wilson the Iron Man, simply came alone into the country of Tibet and climbed to the top of Everest.